The last viral video I saw about wages, was Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda touting their own ignorance about how waitstaff are paid. Two days ago, another comedian, Trae Crowder, posted a video claiming that very few people receive overtime pay in the US because evil companies can simply change your title.
Crowder, obviously, doesn’t have the same name recognition as Tomlin and Fonda, but he has been able to get almost 15,000 shares of his video in 36 hours. So, I thought I better set the record straight before it lands on your feed
Crowder says,
“Now the way US overtime laws are written, all your boss has to do is check off a few simple boxes and now you’re exempt from getting paid fairly. For example, do you make more than $23,660 a year? If so the Federal government says you don’t need overtime.”
To keep reading, click here: That Facebook Viral Video about How It’s Impossible to Get Overtime Pay? False. Also, you can click this link to see the video. I got it to embed at Inc, but not here.
I have to go back to the comedy video to make my points because you showed actual law but falled to realize that in reality companies take the literal words and make them reality. In this age of skim reading, they take those key words —salary,title,etc and classify employees into exempt status to avoid the dreaded overtime cost.
Yes I agree that the laws need changing to fix this but try to get our lawmakers to actually do this is the problem. They can’t even create a budget.
There are companies that don’t follow the rules, but they are breaking the law, and it’s not as utterly impossible to hold them accountable as some Hollywood celebrities would like us to believe.
They have no idea, because they live in a fantasy land (Hollywood) where normal rules (or laws of physics) don’t apply. California has some of the strictest labor laws in the US, but Hollywood owns the state, and where they don’t have exemptions (virtually everyone in Hollywood is either a contractor, and legitimately so, or protected by a very strong union) they do get away with almost anything.
But it’s not like that most other places. The labor board in California takes great pride in dragging business owners out into their parking lot and nailing them to a cross as an example to others. (They would do so literally if they could.) Not that they care about employees, mind you, they’re just drunk with power.